Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s: Toby Keith, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)”

“Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)”

Toby Keith

Written by Toby Keith

Radio & Records

#1 (2 weeks)

July 12 – July 19, 2002

Billboard

#1 (1 week)

July 20, 2002

Revisiting the 2000s means revisiting the foundational years of Country Universe, and so many of those years were tied up in what it meant to be a country music fan as the genre became less inclusive and more insular.

It logically follows that I should explore that here. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” and the artist who wrote and performed it are more representative of that shift that any other song or artist from this era.

But this record was a response to the 9/11 attacks, and that was more than just an attack on my country. It was an attack on my city. Not just on my homeland, but on my home.

Yes, the Twin Towers were a powerful symbol of America’s world dominance. They were also a train stop on my way to school, one where you held your breath for a bit because there’d already been a terrorist attack there, and it had been executed underground the first time around. But New Yorkers know a terrorist attack can happen at any time the same way New Orleanians know a hurricane’s gonna come. It’s a matter of when, not if. You keep your head down and keep moving.

I was still in Nashville during the 9/11 attacks, as well as for the plane crash in Queens that happened on my block two months later. I took comfort in Alan Jackson’s 9/11 tribute. It felt right for the salve to come from the music that had always comforted me, and was so intertwined with my memories of the World Trade Center. I remember buying Bobbie Cryner’s first CD at the Sam Goody in the underground shopping mall, and seeing Lari White and Rick Trevino perform free concerts on this little summer stage that went up every year between the two buildings.

I was back in New York, a recent college graduate getting ready to start a brief teaching career, when this song came out. My dad heard this song first. He loved it right away. He was a veteran himself, and very much a representation of the working class roots of our neighborhood on the outskirts of Queens. My dad was an electrician in a community where many dads were police officers and especially firefighters, and so many sons followed in their father’s footsteps. So many of them died that September day. The years following the attacks, the air was filled with the mournful sounds of bagpipes as enough remains were recovered to lay those sons to rest.

9/11 hit us hard but it felt like for one beautiful moment, all Americans were New Yorkers. And I found such solace in that moment, and country music was such a big part of it. My dad’s enthusiasm for this record had me on board with it all the way through the first verse and the beginning of the chorus. Until that one line came, and I had a visceral, involuntary reaction to it.

Toby Keith said, “The Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.”

And I said, “Oh, shut the **** up. No, she didn’t.”

That’s just not what the Statute of Liberty represents to me as a New Yorker an an American. My patriotism is so directly intertwined with how New York has been the beacon of the world, where success isn’t guaranteed but you’ve got your best shot at living as your authentic self, whether you’re a migrant refugee fleeing a dictator or a gay kid fleeing the Baptists. What draws so many to our city is also what causes so many outside of our city to resent it. (Even some of those who live here. I saw a “Try it in a Small Town” bumper sticker on the street yesterday and burst out laughing, mostly because of what happened when they actually tried it in a big one.)

So this record strikes too many discordant notes for it to work for me. 9/11 made me love my city’s embrace of everyone from everywhere more deeply than I’d ever felt it before. When the towers fell that day, multimillionaire bankers with penthouse apartments died alongside secretaries and dishwashers. Our first responders rushed in to save them all, regardless of where they came from, how long they’d been here, or what they did for a living. They were all Americans to me because they were all New Yorkers.

So as we journey from this point forward, some distance begins to form between my own identity and my love for country music, which had been such a big part of who I was up until that point. It’s a trivial impact of 9/11 in the grand scheme of things, but it’s something I still grieve from time to time.

When “Empire State of Mind” came along, I got my “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” moment. Every time I hear the line “Long live the World Trade,” I feel it in my bones. The pride and the grief, all at once. It’s the right record for me. Too many of my friends and neighbors and eventually my students came from that part of the world that Toby sang about lighting up like the fourth of July. I just couldn’t transfer my anger on to them. They didn’t have any more to do with it than I have to do with what our leaders are doing now.

Toby’s hit is like The Passion of the Christ was for me.  I can understand it as an authentic expression from a talented artist, but that film is as divorced from what drives my Christianity as this record is from what drives my patriotism.

It’s just not for me. I don’t begrudge those who find solace in it. My own father did. Its just not for me.

So I’ll split the difference here. This record was a spectacular failure for a grieving New Yorker, but it certainly delivered for the angry Americans who needed it.

“Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” gets a C.

Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s

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